With board leadership, community momentum, and veteran voices like Anthony Garcia’s, Buckboard Therapeutic Riding Academy in Gering is building a military veteran-led, horse-centered program set to begin in 2026.
MARK KESZLER
Nspire Today! Feature Writer
GERING — For 28 years, Buckboard Therapeutic Riding Academy in Gering has been a haven where children find calm, confidence, and new skills beside a horse.
“Kathy Gatch started it in 1997, and it was focused on kids, and they’ve been so successful,” Kaley said.
What happens in the arena is deceptively simple: a child breathes deeper, a pony’s ears flick back, a smile appears.
“When you sit on a horse, you just get a different feeling and it’s relaxing,” Anthony said after months of volunteering.
Program Director Andrea (“Andee”) Meyers has refined that magic into individualized plans.
“Andee is phenomenal because she doesn’t do cookie-cutter sessions with every child,” Kaley said. “She has taken time to get to know them, to set goals with the kids, to set goals with the parents. To watch how that child has grown in a session a week… it’s crazy to see her passion come through.”
The horse is a “calming agent” that lets goals — fine motor, letters, colors, balance — take root.
Now, Buckboard is broadening the circle to include veterans — and it’s veterans themselves who are helping to build it.
The idea crystallized when a donor told Kaley, who works at the Oregon Trail Community Foundation, “we want to help veterans.” She called county Veteran Service Officer Matt Meyers.
“He said, ‘I can’t believe I never thought of this. I’ve been on the board for Buckboard for two years trying to figure out how to get veteran equine therapy going. One, I know you did it with Anthony. And two, yeah, we have a whole lot of needs if we want to do that.’”
The board embraced the vision: take what has helped children thrive and tailor it to adults who carry combat stress, grief, and moral injury back into civilian life.
Anthony — an 82nd Airborne veteran — says the barn offers something plain talk cannot.
“You can tell that horse absolutely anything,” he said. “You don’t have to say it out loud. That horse knows to take those off of your chest.”
For veterans wary of clinics or telehealth, the culture matters.
“Trying to connect with a therapist via telehealth is extremely difficult,” Kaley said. “When you add that military trauma piece, a therapist that hasn’t served, hasn’t deployed — how are they to then say, ‘I understand what you’re going through?’”
A veteran-led program anchored by Matt and Anthony creates a space where someone can walk in wearing silence and still be understood.
“We will accept you for whatever trauma you think is too bad to speak about to anybody else,” Anthony said. “Whether that is with the horses or not.”
The structure will feel familiar to anyone who’s hung a saddle or stood a quiet watch: start on the ground, earn trust, build skills deliberately, and proceed when you — and the horse — are ready.
“Our sections are truly going to be teaching horsemanship,” Kaley said. “You’re going to learn how to halter a horse, brush them, clean their feet, watch them get their feet trimmed, tack a horse, and mount a horse.”
Comfort and competence in the arena lead to short pasture rides, then to a culminating experience: “An overnight camping trip with no substances, just the guys, the horses, and that camaraderie that they used to have when they were in the service,” Kaley said. “There could be risk. There could be danger, but we’re going to go do it as brothers.”
The pace will be humane and flexible.
“We’re shooting for 1-1 [January 1, 2026],” she said. “We’ve got one veteran for sure identified. We hope to take three guys starting 1-1 and see what it looks like.”
But the calendar won’t boss the barn.
“That’s going to be a loose timeframe because we don’t want anyone to feel rushed. I don’t think we know what a timeline looks like. I think each group of veterans is going to be different.”
Some work may be in small groups; much will be one-on-one, veteran to veteran, human to horse.
The existing children’s program provides infrastructure, volunteers, governance, and steady rhythm; the veteran program will add mentors who’ve found their own steadiness through horsemanship.
“The veterans that are going through this are going to turn into our committed volunteers,” Anthony said.
They’ll show up for kids’ sessions because they want time with horses — and rediscover service in the process.
“When you watch Anthony interact with the kids, they’re going to see that spark in the kid, and they’re going to be drawn to come help,” Kaley said.
That, in turn, gets veterans “out of their shell.”
For years, Buckboard relied on borrowed horses — lovingly provided, led, then taken home. To serve adults well, the team is shifting to owning horses for consistency. “I was a proponent that we should own horses for consistency and continuity between the programs,” Kaley said.
Veterans make bonds; consistency matters. Same horse, same tack, same eyes across the halter.
The community has rallied.
“We’ve had almost $100,000 worth of donations in the last 60 days, either donations or grants that we’ve been working for,” Kaley said.
Visibility is up – there are now horses on site 24/7 – and awareness is spreading through presentations, Leadership Scottsbluff’s Hoops for a Hero (with Buckboard as a beneficiary alongside Reunited in Heaven), and veteran events where Anthony shares his testimony. Each time he speaks, someone steps forward. “There were four guys that reached out to Matt after that day,” Kaley said of one dinner.
Kaley recently joined the board and leans into day-to-day barn work.
“If it has to do with those horses, it is basically Matt, Andee, myself, and Anthony,” she said.
She’s drafted standard operating procedures and “a rough draft of a 12-section program for the veteran side,” and she’s “done a ton of research” so the pilot is safe, structured, and scalable. Anthony brings the credibility only a paratrooper with scars can offer. “If we can get veterans to even just walk in the door and ask questions about our therapy program,” he said, “we have at least identified somebody who is looking for help that we can then help.”
Ask Anthony why it works, and he won’t reach for jargon. He’ll describe a nuzzle on a bad day, a deep breath syncing with a gelding’s, and the way resentment slides off like dust under a curry comb.
“Just the fact that you can release whatever you have going on to a horse, and he will take it — that’s absolutely huge,” he said.
Participants are encouraged not to ride until they’re ready.
“They may never ride a horse, and that’s OK,” Kaley said. “It’s open-ended. Their skin in the game will determine how much they get out of this program.”
The program’s heart traces back to an annual reunion near the Jefferson Barracks where Doc Katzenberger is buried.
“We were having guys commit suicide in our units and in our battalion after we had got out,” Anthony said. He and Kaley began informally advocating — keeping an index card of names, numbers, and work-arounds for broken systems, handing it to anyone stuck. Buckboard turns that kitchen-table advocacy into a place you can find on a map.
Hands are as vital as hay.
“Volunteers for the kids’ program are probably our biggest children’s program need,” Kaley said. “Every child that rides needs two sidewalkers. If we don’t have sidewalkers, those kids can’t ride that day.”
On the adult side, experienced horse volunteers who can help with ground work and safety will be invaluable as the pilot begins. Donations matter, too.
“Hay donations or financial contributions for hay and grain are definitely a need for us,” she said. The nonprofit will stretch every dollar.
Most of all, they want veterans — and families — to know the door is open.
“Just that there is somewhere you can go to meet people who want to support you in whatever you’re going through,” Anthony said. “We will accept you and support you, whether that is with the horses or not.”
In a barn on the south side of town, a child is tracing letters with gloved fingers while a pony walks on; in a nearby pen, a veteran is learning to read a horse’s breathing and, in the quiet, his own. The program’s promise is simple and radical at once: safety, purpose, and a path back to yourself — one halter, one hoof pick, one deep breath at a time.
